Abraham Lincoln

mmmmsmmm^

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

DDDQbm0300

••♦ *e>

i»v

>>«*

#r ^

o H//rX&Ss$ * «^ **V •* 7JMT. • A*"*"* o t/TTwVYtf • c^ w.

-(C. •

\° kT «*

°^ "♦5m •• ^P ^ '♦•vT9* ^

; >0^ :«^; d>* vaR: >°^k :

♦* ^

v *♦;?>• j> °°. *^r, .• *p' ^ %^

4? *££:♦ * ^.••••- %> 4? .•iA^

a* VJRil^* a a. »a^LJ^.* v^ a*' ♦^H^<

v%

•- ^v :

<* *o

o. ♦"TVtt .A <. *••»• <0

^ ^ 0 » I

'<> 45^

.6fVc«--^o

y!*. -a.

.^.^<>o y^.v y..^to.% .

*. "of .*

<V^V V^*>'1 v^V

•fr*"J«.

ft

Abraham ffitnniltt

WITH COMPLIMENTS OF

W. IS,

ROCHESTER, N. Y..

,/TOi^^/ <3LC4^c^r^

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ADDRESS

DELIVER HI) RY

W- MARTIN JONES

Phoenix, N, Y<

The Thirtieth Day of Mayt \ 904

PRESS OF K. W. EACE

ROCHESTER, X. V.

I904

Gift
Au;h< r
(Pertoi

24 M

.8

INTRODUCTK >N.

Yielding to repeated solicitations of friends
I have had the following address on Abraham
Lincoln put in print. As a mere brochure on
the life of the most eminent American of his
century, the address might well be material 1\
altered, but I prefer to print it as I delivered it—
without amendment or addition. I seek only to
make the book suitable for presentation to
friends, and, as a leaf from the history of a most
interesting and eventful period, I take pleasure
in placing it in their possession.

The picture facing the title page is, in my opin-
ion, the best likeness extant of Abraham Lincoln.
It occurs to me that the book will hardly be com-
plete without it. The autograph is a reproduc-
tion of Mr. Lincoln's signature as it was affixed
to a commission at the Department of State
only a few days before that sad Good Friday in
1865, that witnessed the tragedy at Ford's
Theater. From personal knowledge I believe
I am justified in saying that Mr. Lincoln signed
all official documents with his full name. I do not
remember to have seen any such paper bearing

INTRODUCTION

his signature with his first name abbreviated.
It was a frequent occurrence, however, for him
to sign his name "A. Lincoln " to letters and
other unofficial documents, but when the matter
was of a distinctively official character the name
was written as indicated by the signature, —
Abraham Lincoln.

The labor of preparing this address on the life,
work and character of the great emancipator,
and of putting it in print, has been a labor of
love — love for the remnant of the " Boys in
Blue " who invited me to speak to them, a mere
fraction of the great Union Army, with many
divisions of which I camped on tented fields
when stern visaged war was our bed-fellow, and
love for the great hearted patriot whose beautiful
life has become a benediction to the nations and
is the equal heritage of every American Freeman.

The Author.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

This day is consecrated. Decorated with
beautiful flowers, moistened with patriotic tears
and hallowed in loving, throbbing heart beats, it
is unique as well as national in the American
calendar. Annually we gather in loving re-
memberance of the noble men- — now just over the
way — who went out more than forty years ago to
maintain national integrity and to demonstrate
to the world that the last great effort of a free
people to govern themselves was not — what
despotism had prophesied— a gigantic failure.
We have come a long way from the days when
the clarion notes of the war bugle sounded clear
and loud along the valleys and over the hill and
mountain tops, of this fair land, calling men from
the work-shop and the field, boys from the
counting-room and the class-room, to put on the
"Blue" and march to a country's salvation. But
time cannot efface the memory of those Spartan
scenes. As I stand here to-day looking into the
bronzed faces of the remnant of those brave men,
who responded to that call it all comes to me
anew. Time seems turning backward in its
relentless forward march. I am again a boy in

5

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

my teens, poring over problems that puzzle
pupils, ransacking lexicons for solutions of mys-
tifying maxims, and trying diligently to accom-
plish results that seemed then to me to be so far
beyond human attainment. Again I witness the
exciting political campaign of the memorable
year i860. Again I hear the drum beat and see
the marching columns of voters as they pass in
review before excited multitudes, preparing for
the battle of the ballots. I hear the bells ringing
and the shouts that proclaim the victory of a
party that was bold enough and true enough and
strong enough to declare that there must be no
further extension of slave territory on the con-
tinent governed by this nation. I catch from
day to day startling news that comes over the
wires from the Land of the Palmetto ; I hear
the report of the gun that fires on the American
Flag in Charleston Harbor, and I see the pre-
parations of an awakened people, as men gather
for the purpose of demonstrating that this Union
must live and that the great problems set for
solution on this continent must be worked out
by the patient labor of free men. Then, I see
the marching thousands as they go on to the
conflict in the South and now — away in the year
1904 — I am looking into the faces — no longer
with round and ruddy cheeks — of some of those
who went out under such circumstances to do
their duty at the front and who, alone of the
vast numbers that responded so promptly, so

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

generously and so patriotically to the call of the
country in its hour of peril, arc left to com-
memorate the scenes of those days that tried

men's souls.

It has come to be a recognized principle among
men and nations that in an hour of peril, when
men and nations need a leader, God raises up
one made of just the right material for the
circumstances. So it was in the dark and stormy
period of the American Revolution. I need not
name the Father of his country. So it was in
the days of the French Revolution. Napoleon
Bonaparte was the fruit of the civilization that
preceded him. He has been judged by history,
yet I sometimes feel that he may have been
misjudged by history, but, be that as it may, he
was of the mettle that was required to blaze the
way for the future France. He did it, but his
ambition was of that character that led him into
excesses and, eventually, left him stranded on
St. Helena. Time came, later when on this
continent one was needed to serve a people in
their hour of peril, — a man of cool judgment.
conscientious purpose, patriotic motives, un-
daunted by fear, unmoved by malice and un-
touched by ambition. There were man)- men oi
the period who could have done nolle work but
it is a grave question now, as we look back to
those days over a period of forty year- interven-
ing, whether in all the land, there was another
who, under all the circumstances, and burdened

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

by the conditions that beset the Nation at the
time of the opening of the conflict in the year
1861, could have performed the duties of a leader
in such a perilous moment, as perfectly and as
successfully as did Abraham Lincoln. Born of
poor parentage, in a Slave State, migrating at an
early age into a non-slaveholding State, on the
border between two classes of civilization, he had
little opportunity in his early life to solve the
great problems that were demanding the
attention of the thinking men of the nation. He
spent his early days in a condition little removed
from want and wretchedness but there was
implanted within the man that keen sense of
justice, tempered with mercy, and tempered yet
again with a great fund of humor, that prepared
him magnificently for the gigantic work that lay
before him.

In order fairly to understand the circumstances
under which his early days were spent, it becomes
necessary to glance briefly at the state of society
and the conditions that prevailed along the Ohio
border. Due to the proximity of the border free
states north of the Ohio River to slaveholding
territory, the people of that section were brought
face to face with many of the evils growing out
of the peculiar institution across the river. The
frequent coming into the Free States of escaping
bondmen forced upon the northern whites a
startling contrast between the conditions that
existed in slave territory and American civil-

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

ization, as it was sought to be nurtured and
cultivated north of the Ohio River.

Necessarily, the attention of Abraham Lin< oln
was directed from time to time to these con-
ditions, and, possessing a keen sense of justice
and right, he was not long in coming to tin-
conclusion that a great wrong was being
committed in the enslavement of human beings
on this continent. As early as the year 1820,
the minds of men began to turn to a consider-
ation of these conditions. Along this border
line and within free territory, men's interests
prompted them to lean toward the aristocrasy of
the South. The merchants of border cities
found their best customers coming from south of
the Ohio river and people of wealth and those
seeking influential associations found it to their
advantage, in one way and another, to sympathize
with the slaveholder who had lost his slave on
free territory and give him aid in his endeavor to
regain his fleeing property. We are. all familiar
with the crisis that came to Lane Seminar}', in
the suburbs of Cincinnati, and over which, that
fearless champion of human rights, Lyman
Beecher of Connecticut, once presided. Here
also, lived his daughter, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
whose husband was an instructor in the Sem-
inary, and here she became familiar with the
peculiar institution, which enabled her sub-
sequently to strike a blow for freedom that has
never been surpassed by any writer of fiction.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Out of this crisis that came to Lane Seminary
came the establishment of the well-known
Abolition School at Oberlin. Then appeared
upon the political landscape a character, whose
personality has been stamped indelibly upon the
civilization of that period, — James G. Birney.
He, too, was a Kentuckian by birth, was once a
slaveholder, but, yielding to his own awakened
conscience, renounced the system, set his own
slaves free and devoted his life and all he
possessed in the world to secure the manumission
of slaves in America. Men began to think on
these questions very earnestly. Like Banco's'
ghost, the subject would not "down." It would
rise in the most unexpected places. One, a little
bolder than another, with fixed opinions and
conscientious purposes, would speak his senti-
ments and instantly the community was in a
tumult. The spirit of compromise possessed
politicians, but compromise was inadequate. It
had become indeed an "irrepressible conflict."
The forties came and went, the Missouri
compromise was adopted and abandoned, the
last great compromise of Henry Clay, in 1850,
that was to settle all troubles, was forced to its
conclusion, and yet the conflict was still
irrepressible. He who was most affected by all
these contests refused to be content while still
held in unwilling bondage, and nightly, with his
eye on the north star, and daily, with his know-
ledge that the moss grew on the north side of

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

the forest tree, he followed his wear) road to
freedom. Some of us here to-day remember
how in childhood we listened with rapl attentii n
and with hearts burning in hatred oi the
institution, while the poor slave on his \v;i\ to
freedom by the underground railroad told oi his
wrongs and showed us the marks of his cruel
treatment. Some of us, too, have probably seen
the institution as it was, and have touched hands
with the poor sons and daughters of Africa as
they toiled early and late in the fields of the
Southern owner with no compensation for their
labor other than the rags they wore and the
coarse food they received to keep soul and b< dy
together.

The fact, however, existed, that as a Confeder-
ation the people of the states respectively held
control over this question exclusively. Recog-
nizing the fact that slavery existed in all the
colonies of the confederation prior to the
Revolution that separated them from the mother
country, we find a reason for the retention of the
system in a climate that required the services oi
men who were able to withstand conditions that
were supposed to be beyond the endurance of
the white race. The people of the South were
brought up in the conscientious belief that
slavery was a condition for the black man
superior to that of freedom. In slavery he was
cared for in childhood and in old age, while in
the period between he only paid for his care and

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

maintenance in the beginning and in the ending
of his career. The South chose to continue
slavery, while the North chose to abolish it. It
was entirely in the hands of the respective colon-
ies and the South could with propriety say to the
North that it was a matter that the North had
nothing to do with ; that the South came into
the Confederation as separate and independent
states or nationalities ; that slavery was a legal
institution, that it existed in these separate colon-
ies and states at the time of the adoption of the
First Articles of Confederation and was recog-
nized in the Constitution in 1787; that as
so recognized these states became a part and
parcel of the Confederation ; that they came
into it as independent municipalities, that they
resigned to the general government no power on
the subject of slavery within their respective
borders and that they could not be interfered
with by other members of that compact. There
was very much in this argument. It was sound
from the position occupied by the Southern
States. The Constitution so far recognized the
institution of slavery that it provided that no law
should be enacted prior to the year 1808, that
should prohibit the traffic in slaves from Africa.
It was known and understood that at the time of
the making of this federal union there was a
business being carried on across the sea whereby
men and women were being brought from Africa
and sold into bondage on the Western side of the

12

ABR \ii\.\I MNl <>I.N

Atlantic, and it is also a well recognized fad thai
much of this traffic was carried on by ship-owners
and navigators who came from Northern states,
and who plied the traffic for the benefit of

Southern slaveholders because, in doing it, they
reaped a large profit themselves, And so, while
there was an evident desire on the part of mam
members of the Convention that framed the Con-
stitution under which we are living to-day, to
blot out the remembrance even of a traffic in
human flesh across the sea, there was, neverthe_
less, an element in the South, where they felt
that they needed more laborers to hold on to that
traffic, and it was only upon a compromise that
it was finally agreed that this traffic should be
prohibited at the end of twenty years. Accord-
ingly, it must be admitted by all candid men that
the Union of the States could not then have
been accomplished on the basis finally agreed
upon except it had been upon such a compromise
as would admit into the Union communities that
believed in slavery and in continuing it in some
portions of the Confederacy. These facts we
must recognize, when we come at this late day,
more than forty years after the final outburst
between the two sections, to consider the condi-
tions that then existed and rightly and properly
to understand the duties that necessarily devolved
upon men who were placed in responsible posi-
tions over the entire nation.

While Abraham Lincoln had been educated in

13

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

the severe school of adversity and want, when he
was forced, in gaining- a livelihood, to navigate flat
boats on the shallow streams of the West and to
split rails in farm work, he was also familiar from
his childhood with the peculiar institution of
involuntary servitude.

I venture the statement that there never was
a time when he did not absolutely abhor the
institution of slavery. His soul revolted with
righteous indignation at even the thought that
one man could legally hold title to another. Yet,
he was himself, a poor boy, born under circum-
stances that left but a thin parting between the
ways of the poor white man and the colored
slave. At the time when Abraham Lincoln came
to be identified in any manner with public affairs
in the nation, there had come to be great agitation
over the further extension of slavery in the
country. If the discussion could have been kept
down to the question of laws and the Constitu-
tion, the South and the slaveholding aristocracy
had the advantage of title to the peculiar institu-
tion by undisputed recognition on the part of all
the rest of the Nation and on the part of the
Constitution itself, and they held, what has
always been regarded as nine points out of ten of
the law, possession, absolute and recognized, of
the institution itself. Accordingly, when such
bold men as Burney and Garrison and Phillips
and a host of others forced the issue of free
speech, free soil and free man, and denounced

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

slavery as a cruel wrong, not to say a wasteful,
demoralizing, murderous and soul-destroying
institution, the South felt, and, naturally, from
their standpoint believed, that the other portion

of the Confederation was taking a course that
was unjust, inequitable and unfair toward them.
They believed sincerely that they were enjoying
the highest fruits of human civilization and that
they were far in advance of the people of the
North, who, themselves, did senile labor in the
field, while the Southerners sat in the shadows of
the palmettos and the black men did the labor for
both. They were forced into the arena to del end
their institution, and they took the high -round
as they believed it to be, of claiming that slavery
was a divine institution, that it was democratic
and civilizing. Then they rested, under the
Constitution, behind the bulwark of state rights,
for it must be conceded that the general govern-
ment, under the system thus incorporated into
its organic law in the forming of the Confedera-
tion, had no power over the institution of slavery
in the several states which chose to maintain it.
The difficulty with the whole matter lay in the
arrogant position of the slaveholder, when he
declared that the general government owed to
him the duty of protecting the peculiar institu-
tion, not only within slave state lines but as well
without, when he chose to go with his human
property into jurisdictions where slavery was not
recognized but strictly prohibited. This was

15

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

leaving his own entrenchments, behind which he
was reasonably secure, and coming out into the
open where the abolitionist and those who were
opposed to human bondage had prepared to meet
him. The South demanded the abrogation of
free speech. It insisted that the postoffice, and
all the power that rested within it, should be
turned to the protection of the slaveholders and
that men should be punished for sending incen-
diary matter through the mails, and delivering it
at offices south of Mason and Dixon's line.
There were extreme men on both sides. There
were those in the North who insisted that the
Union must be dissolved in order to dissolve a
co-partnership unwillingly existing between slave
and free states. It is unnecessary to go over the
arguments advanced by either party in the con-
troversy that began in earnest when John Ouincy
Adams, the Old Man Eloquent, unaided and
alone, fought the battle of the right of petition
on the floor of the House of Representatives.
As we glance along the pages of our history dur-
ing this period we see names that attract us and
we would gladly dwell upon them but the occasion
will not permit. Neither need I dwell upon
incidents that brought to the national conscience
in unmistakable manner the evils and sufferings
that were being inflicted upon human beings by
that great wrong in fair sunny southland.

Under other circumstances I might pause to
tell you the stories of Matilda Lawrence and

16

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Margaret Garner. It is enough to know that
these were among the incidents growing out of
the wrongs inflicted upon the poor black men ol
the south and their attempts to gain their much
coveted freedom. I would not unnecessarily
call up unpleasant memories— especially in this
day of good feeling and good fellow-ship — and
yet, if we are properly to understand conditions
that developed character, that made men and his-
tory and heroes, we must con our lessons carefully.
Effects are the natural sequence.-, of causes. We
cannot study the one and neglect the other.

" A dreamer dropped a random thought ; 'twas old, and
yet 'twas new ;
A simple fancy of the brain, but strong in being true.
It shone upon a genial mind, and lo ! its light became

A lamp of life, a beacon ray, a monitory flame.
The thought was small ; its issue great ; a watchfire on
the hill,
It sheds its radiauce far adown, and cheers the valley
still !

"A nameless man, amid the crowd that thronged the
daily mart.
Let fall a word of Hope and Love, unstudied, from the
heart ;
A whisper on the tumult thrown, — a transitory breath, —
It raised a brother from the dust ; it saved a soul from
death.
O germ ! O fount ! O word of love ! O thought at random
cast !
Ye w^ere but little at the first, but mighty at the last."

My purpose is sufficiently attained by referring
17

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

to these sad incidents in our national life as
among the circumstances that awakened the
consciences of men. It is good that we may
forget. It is good that Time heals wounds. It
is good that the children do not always see with
the eyes of the parents. " I cannot bring myself
to believe," said a fair, sweet Kentucky miss of
sixteen recently, "that my grandfather ever
owned a man." Do not try to believe it, my
dear child, do not try. It is all a horrible dream
and let us forget it together.

But the subject of our study to-day is a char-
acter that was formed to meet conditions existing
more than forty years ago. The scenes and
incidents of that period left their mark upon the
man and prepared him for the future. The
wrongs the poor black man suffered appealed
forcibly to the mind and heart and conscience of
Abraham Lincoln. It cannot be said that he
was not an ambitious man, but his was an ambi-
tion to minister to others, rather than to himself.
He sought to serve the public well. He early
became active in political life. He showed his
qualifications as an organizer in more than one
political campaign. He came to be recognized
in the community where he lived as a leader.
When he entered into a movement, whatever it
was, he put his whole soul, his whole being into
it. It became a part of him. He possessed a
fund of originality that carried him onward and
upward continually. One of his strongest points

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

in debate was to meet argument with anecdote,
which itself, was an unanswerable argument
when it came fresh from the lips and hearl oi
the great commoner. In a way he was an
orator. I need only refer to his numerous
addresses to show this and I think no living
to-day would dare den}- it. Many of his expres-
sions are epigrammatical, terse, to the point by
the shortest line, absolutely unanswerable and
convincing by the force of the purity of tHeir
logic. No man uttered a truer sentence than
that pronounced by Abraham Lincoln in a speech
delivered by him two years before he was nomin-
ated for the Presidency, when he said, "A house
divided against itself cannot stand." This, it is
true, was but a quotation but when he followed
it up with the sentence, " I believe this Govern-
ment cannot endure permanently half slave and
half free," he gave utterance to an axiom. It
was another way of proclaiming the " irrepress-
ible conflict." And then he followed up his
axiom with a statement that could leave no doubt
in the minds of his auditors where Abraham
Lincoln stood in that conflict. "I do not," he
said, "expect the Union to be dissolved, — I do
not expect the house to fall, — but I do expect
it will cease to be divided. Either the opponents
of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and
place it where the public mind shall rest in the
belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinc-
tion ; or its advocates will push it forward, till

19

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

it shall become alike, lawful in all the states, old
as well as new — North as well as South." Here
was the issue in a nutshell. He little thought
when he stood in his place in Springfield, that
day in 1858, that upon him Abraham Lincoln,
would devolve such momentous duties as would
follow the election of i860. And he as little
thought that with him bye and bye must rest the
decision that would save the house from falling
and would lead to a condition where the house
would cease to be divided.

We pass quickly the days of his great debate
with Stephen A. Douglas, the little giant of the
West, and we come down to a period following
the election in i860, and his safe arrival in the
City of Washington. There on the 4th day of
March, 1861, on the east steps of the National
Capital, he delivered to the world an address that
comes clown to us to-day replete with soul
inspiring, heart-rending remembrances. When
that address was delivered I was still the school
boy in my teens, wrestling with unsolved prob-
lems. It had not then been my privilege to
touch the hem of the garment of the great man
who on that memorable day took the oath of
office of President of the United States, but,
sitting in the quiet of my room I read over and
over again his passionate appeal for peace and for
nationality that I knew came from the very soul
of an honest patriot. I felt in my own heart that
the heart of Abraham Lincoln was the true

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

heart of the Nation. I felt that in the man who
gave utterance to such sentiments th< cai
justice, right and national liberty could be reposed
with perfect confidence in the result. Later I
came to know the man well and I found him
even grander and truer and nobler than I had
pictured him in my own mind to be.

Let us turn back several pages of our histor)
for a moment while I read a few sentences from
the immortal Inaugural address. With what
pathos he dwells upon the duty that all, both
North and South, owed to the Union. How
carefully he points to the characteristics that
make the Government Federal in its character,
yet a single nation ; and with what exceeding
nicety he demonstrates the fact that the States
cannot be severed from one another ; that the
Union is a Union for all the future and the South
as well as the North owe allegiance, service and
devotion to the central government under the
compact that brought them together into one
system. In the closing paragraphs he especially
appeals to the men of the South to think calmly
and well upon the whole subject before they take
any rash action in opposition to the federal
authority. The two closing paragraphs read
to-day not like ordinary sentences that we gather
here and there among the noted speeches of the
world, but rather like prophecy. "In your
hands," he said, "my dissatisfied fellow-country-
men, and not in mine, is the momentous issue

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

of civil war. The Government will not assail
you. You can have no conflict without being
yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath
registered in Heaven to destroy the Govern-
ment, while I shall have the most solemn one to
'preserve, protect and defend it.' "

" I am loathe to close. We are not enemies,
but friends. We must not be enemies. Though
passion may have strained it must not break our
bonds of affection. The mystic chords of
memory, stretching from every battlefield and
patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-
stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union, when again touched, as
surely they will be, by the better angels of our
nature."

While Abraham Lincoln had able advisers,
many of whom I knew personally and intimately
and whose memory I cherish deadly, yet I would
emphasize the fact that Abraham Lincoln was
President. He listened to advice ; if it appealed
to him as wise and judicious he promptly and
frankly accepted it. He recognized the fact in
the early days of his administration that there was
coming to him a trial such as no other man had
ever experienced. Here was the last great effort
of a people to establish free government. There
were not few to prophesy that the experiment
would be a failure. Like an echo of the first
shot of the rebellion, rebounding from the chalk
cliffs of old England, and as quickly as the

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

returning waxes of air could bring it ba< k :
own shores, came the murmur of satisfai i ion and

rejoicing at — what was then taken as an estab
lished fact — our national dissolutii >n. M r. J ustin
McCarthy, the author of "The Histor) o
own Times," tells us that, "The vast majoi
what are called the governing classes were on
the side of the South. London club life was
virtually all Southern. The most powerful papers
in London and the most popular papers as well,
were open partisans of the Southern confedera-
tion." A writer in the Atlantic Monthly for
November 1861, says: "We have read at
three English newspapers for each week ti.
passed since our troubles began ; we have been
a reader of these papers for a series of years. In
not one of them have we met the sentence or
the line which pronounces hopefully, with bold
assurance for the renewed life of our Union. In
by far the most of them there is reiterated the
most positive and dogged averment that there i>
no future for us." A writer in the Edinburgh
"Quarterly Review" said, "We believe the
conquest of the South to be a hopeless dream,
and the reunion of the states in one all-powerful
republic an impossibility. There is verge and
room enough on the vast continent of America
for two or three, or even more, powerful repub-
lics, and each may flourish undisturbed, if so
inclined, without being a source of disquiet to its
neighbors. There will be no loss of anything

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

which conduces to the general happiness of man-
kind. For the contest on the part of'the North
now is undisguisedly for empire."

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the novelist, who
wrote most enticing stories, but who was born
and bred under monarchial institutions, could not
conceal his sentiments. Not long after the
attack on Fort Sumter, he said, " I venture to
predict that the younger men here present will live
to see not two, but at least four, separate and
sovereign commonwealths arising out of those
populations wrhich a year ago united their legis-
lation under one president and carried their
merchandise under one flag. I believe that such
separation will be attended with happy results
to the safety of Europe and the development of
American civilization. If it could have been
possible that as population and wealth increased,
all that vast continent of America, with her
mighty sea-board and the fleets which her increas-
ing ambition as well as her extending commerce
would have formed and armed, could have
remained under one form of Government, in
which the executive has little or no control over
a populace exceedingly adventurous and excit-
able, why, then America would have hung over
Europe like a gathering and destructive thunder
cloud. No single kingdom in Europe could
have been strong enough to maintain itself
against a nation that had consolidated the gigantic
resources of a quarter of the globe."

24

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

•

The Karl of Shrewsbury said : " I see in
America the trial of democracy and its failure.
I believe that the dissolution of the Union is
inevitable, and that men now before me will live
to see an aristocracy established in America."

All these utterances came to the knowledge
of Abraham Lincoln, lie saw clearly the I
road before him. Mr. Seward was at the head
of the foreign department. The magnii
service he rendered the nation there is known
and admitted. With what a firm hand he held
our diplomatic officers up to a high standard in
their intercourse with foreign states, we know
and we read as a part of the history of that
eventful period. For example, he said, to Mr.
Charles Francis Adams, when setting out to his
mission at The Court of St. James, — "You will
in no case listen to any suggestions of comprom-
ise by this government under foreign auspices,
with its discontented citizens. If, as the
president does not at all apprehend, you shall
unhappily find her majesty's government tolerat-
ing the application of the so-called seceding
states, or wavering about it, you will not leave
them to suppose for a moment that they ran
grant that application and remain the friends of
the United States. You may even assure them
promptly in that case that if they determine to
recognize, they may at the same time prepare
to enter into an alliance with, the enemies of
this republic. You alone will represent your

25

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

country at London, and you will represent the
whole of it there. When you are asked to divide
that duty with others, diplomatic relations
between the government of Great Britain and
this government will be suspended, and will
remain so until it shall be seen which of the two
is most strongly entrenched in the confidence of
their respective nations and of mankind."

It is well known that not only was this strong
language known to Mr. Lincoln but that sugges-
tions were made by him in its preparation. We
know how Confederate privateers, sent out from
British ports, preyed upon the commerce of the
nation and we know how excellent a bookkeeper
Mr. Seward was and how carefully he kept the
account that was afterward fully adjusted and
audited at Geneva. It is not too much to say,
and in saying it no credit due to William H.
Seward and his magnificent administration of our
foreign relations during that period is taken from
him, that Abraham Lincoln was at the helm of
the Ship of State ; that while he may not have
formulated diplomatic instructions, he may not
have watched constantly over these relations as
his sleepless Secretary did, yet he was continu-
ally and closely in touch with every step taken in
respect to them.

It is well, in this connection, that we do not
overlook the fact, that in those gloomy days of
our peril, there was one nation in all the group
of foreign powers that had a kind word to say to

26

ABRAHAM LINCOLN-
US. Whatever betide in the changing oi the
map of the eastern hemisphere, we will nevei
forget the timely acts of Russia when this nation
was passing through the dark and stormy days
of the slaveholders' Rebellion. It may have
been an anomalous international condition that
would bring to free America in her struggle for
national existence friendly relations with the
most despotic government in the world; but.
whatever the circumstances were, whatev< r
conditions existed, it is nevertheless the fact
that when other leading nations of Europe were
deliberating upon the proposition of recognizing
the independence of the so-called confederacy,
and had even resolved upon such a course,
Russia sent her ships of war to the American
sea board, bearing sealed orders, a menace to the
nation that dared to frown upon the young repub-
lic. A Russian admiral, while sojourning in the
port of New York, was asked by one of our own
admirals, with whom he was on terms of intimacy,
why he was spending the winter in idleness in an
American harbor, and his reply was, " I am
here under sealed orders, to be broken only on a
contingency which has not yet occurred." lie
added also that the Russian men-of-war lying off
San Francisco had received the same orders.
He admitted in that same interview that his
orders were to break the seals, if, while he
remained at New York, the United States became
involved in a war with any foreign nation. And

ABRAHAM LINCOJ N

the Russian Minister at Washington said to Mr.
Seward that it was no unfriendly purpose which
caused the prolonged stay of these men-of-war
in American waters. A prominent American
while in St. Petersburg subsequently was shown
the Czar's orders to his Admiral, — sealed till
then, — and they were to report to the President
of 'the United States for duty in case our govern-
ment became involved in a war with England.
Looking now, — after forty years — upon the pages
of that history which cannot in one jot or tittle
be changed, is it not natural that we should hold
for Russia most pleasant memories ? And may
we not stop a moment when we hear of Russian
reverses in the far East, and ask ourselves if all
the sympathy that America has to bestow upon
people of other lands, belongs entirely to yellow
races ? Is it not at least profitable, just for one
moment, to pause and ask, of two perils to the
world, is the white peril liable to be more detri-
mental to civilization than the yellow peril ? But
I am not unmindful of the occasion that brings
us here to-day and I stop with this passing
comment on the unfortunate conditions that
exist across many seas in the far Eastern por-
tion of the globe.

Those were trying clays indeed, when the
nation, all unprepared, had to meet the well
disciplined leaders of rebellion and conquer suc-
cess. Few men knew the trials that beset the
pathway of the President of the Nation. There

28

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

he financial question to be < onsid< red.
relations \\ ith othei na1 ions « ami I i idly to the
front. There were questions pertaining to the
Navy, whoso ships were scattered to the foui
winds of I [eaven b) the conspiratoi
been hatching treason for months under the
weak administration that preceded that oi Lin-
coln. There were questions in the law d<
ment, — questions in the postoffice department,
and last, but by no means the least, there w
army to be organized and put into the field. For
months alter the southern states had passed th< n
Ordinances of Secession the United States
Government was reaching out all over th; I
sunny south land by its postal facilities and was
delivering mails to citizens at their doors the
same as though there was no armed resisl
organized and established against the authorit)
that was thus peacefully and quietly doing its
duty toward them. Then again, it was by no
means a trivial matter that the great 1 'resident
must consider when he turned to the legal
questions that confronted him. He was not
elected President to destroy a Constitutio
he said in that first immortal Inaugural Address,
but he was elected to preserve it. Under the
Constitution slavery existed in a large portion oi
the country and existed by right of State Con-
stitutions and laws. Under the compact the
Government had no power to abolish slavery in
these States. Abraham Lincoln, with clear

29

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

foresight, with unerring precision, saw the diffi-
culties that confronted him, knew better than
any legal adviser could tell him where his line of
duty extended, and knew well, that until it
became a necessity as a war measure for the
purpose of overthrowing those who were in arms
against the Government, he had no power to
interfere with the institution established by state
enactment. We do not forget when there were
not in the English language vituperative express-
ions strong enough, in the minds of radicals and
rebel sympathisers, with which to assail the
President. We do not forget how the adminis-
tration was importuned to adopt a different policy
than it was pursuing, how men, high in party
councils, strong in national reputations, big with
success achieved in their own walks in life, in
editorial work, on the floors of legislative halls,
on the rostrum and in the pulpit, assailed the
methods, the purposes, the honesty, integrity
and patriotism of one who has gone down in
history as one of the purest, noblest, most
unselfish and patriotic men who ever breathed
the free air of a free nation. If time would
permit me, I could easilv give instances where,
smarting under the calumny heaped upon him
both by friend and foe, this grand man sought to
respond to these attacks, and, as we look ever
the history to-day, we see how successfully he
accomplished his purpose.

I have said that I had no personal acquaintance

30

A.BRAH \ V. I

with Abraham Lincoln when h( ■!«
first [naugura]

that memorable March daw hov
tune led me to the Capital and for

was placed in a position where I v.

frequent contact with the man w

we revere. Frequently have I taken his hand,

or more properly speaking, have I felt his

great hand encircling my own. He v\

man. 1 1c wai i ous man. when

his hand closed around your own, an

own was loosed, you could but say that il

sped 1)}" the hand of a gianl
senses than one. I (e may have been an aw i
man as we measure the personality and M
tility of men, but, as I think of him to-day, 1
cannot think of him as an awkward mac.
extreme length of limb may sometimes have
a little embarassing to him when meeting small
men, but he was none too tall, none t< o large,
and I feel that he was in all particulars just the
man in stature that was needed to stand at the
helm of the Ship of State while it plowed it-
way through the tempestuous seas from '
1865. I stood almost where I could lay 1 1)
hand upon his when, on the front steps
National Capitol on the 4th da) of March. [865,
after four years of bitter trial— four long
of cruel war — and after coming in sight of tin-
white peaks that signalled the coming day, he
delivered his second Inaugural Address

31

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

again took the oath of office as President of the
United States. That address was brief ; it
hardly required five minutes in which to deliver
it, but it contained all that was needed. I
remember how disappointed I was as I stood
there and heard the final words. It seemed to
me that he had omitted something he ought to
say. Now, however, as I read it over again, I
feel that it was complete. Note the devout
prayer as it fell from the lips of the great Presi-
dent,— " Fondly do we hope, fervently do we
pray, that this mighty scourge of war may
speedily pass away ; yet if it be God's will that
it continue until the wealth piled by bondsmen
by two hundred and fifty years' unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn
with the lash shall be paid by another drawn
with the sword, as was said three thousand years
ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

" With malice toward none, with charity for
all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to
see the right, let us strive on to finish the work
we are in, to bind up the nations' wounds, to care
for him who shall have borne the battle, and for
his widow and orphans ; to do all which may
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace
among ourselves and with all nations."

A few weeks later, the nation was electrified
by the news from Appomattox. I sat at my desk
three evenings later when I heard the sweet

32

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

strains of music from a passing procession. Still
instinct with a box's love of music and I
always quite ready to follow a band I joined
the procession and stood under the President's
window at the White House. There I
him deliver the last speech he ever made to the
American people. It was the calm delil
statement of a man full of experience, ho]
for the future, anxious to make no mistakes,
with a heartfelt feeling of charity to those who
had been misguided in their attack upon the
general Government. He carefully outlined
rules for action in strict compliance with his
second Inaugural Address. Only two days after
that memorable evening under the President's
window, I saw Abraham Lincoln for the last
time. It was Good Friday, lie was in the full
strength of his manhood, flushed with a sense oi
victory that was then crowning the efforts he had
been making for a period of more than four
years. I sat in a front seat in the dress circle of
Ford's Theatre. Laura Keene and her troupe
were on the stage ; there was a commotion back
of the dress circle; and I arose with the audi-
ence to welcome to the play the man whom almost
everyone had then learned to love. I thought, as
I saw him come unguarded into the gathering
that night, that someone had blundered, for there
were lying on the table of Cabinet Ministers at
the moment confidential messages from foreign
countries, some of which had passed through my

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

own hands, which, alone should have prompted
those who were watching over the safety of the
President to keep near his person, whether he
willed it or not, sufficient protection to guard
against any possible disaster. Fearless in all his
lifetime, because he felt that he had nothing to
fear from men, he had never hesitated to assume
any risks that might possibly be thrown upon
him in the honest discharge of his duties. I saw
him ride to the front where bullets were making
music in the ears of those in his company, when
General Early threw his army north of the
Capitol in 1864, but Abraham Lincoln feared no
bullets, nor cannon balls, nor assassins' knives,
and he went boldly and fearlessly wherever it
seemed to him that duty called him. No Cabinet
Minister was lax in duty, for the President would
not consent that a guard should follow or protect
him. He gave no credit to stories of plots of
assassination and would not believe that the
country held one who would be so depraved as
to wish to do him bodily harm. And so on that
sad Good Friday night in 1865, unguarded except
by consciousness of integrity, he entered Ford's
Theatre, received the greetings of glad hearts,
smiled and bowed his head in a winning manner,
and passed into the box, whence one brief hour
afterward I saw him borne away by soldier hands
to the house across the street, where on the
following morning his spirit went to join the in-
numerable host of boys in blue, boys, who, if they

34

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

were lure to-day, would wear the bronze button
•on the lapel of their coats, boys who had been
where bullets were thick, where cannon balls
had been all-powerful and whose memorj we
cherish 'and revere with that of the Martyr
President and in whose honor we scatter flowers
on the 30th day of every Maw

The whole world wept at the bier of Abraham
Lincoln. While living, men could revile him and
mock him, could point to his ungainly manner,
his homely person and his more homely expres-
sions and stories, but dead, the tongue of calumny
was still. Suddenly the true worth of the man ;
the full measure of his ability ; the high standard
of his surpassing intellect and the devotion of
his life were recognized. Those homely expres-
sions and stories will live when the men who
reviled him and them shall have been forgotten
for more than a thousand years. The world
appreciated Abraham Lincoln when it could own
him no more. I have in my library a volume as
large as an unabridged dictionary that is devoted
to tributes to the memory of Abraham Lincoln
gathered from the world. Men vied with one
another to extol his virtues and pay tribute to
his worth. Poets sang of him, orators pro-
nounced eulogies over him, and at last, but only
when his lips were sealed forever, he was recog-
nized at his full value by the whole world. I [is
name to-day is enrolled among the names of the

35

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

great of all times and of all lands, and his figure
stands in every Hall of Fame.

Lord Beaconsfield, who himself, was one of
the greatest minds that England has produced.
said of the sad event that had removed the great
President from the head of the Nation, that,—
" In the character of the victim, and even in the
accessories of his last moments, there is some-
thing so homely and innocent that it takes the
question, as it were, out of all the pomp of his-
tory and the ceremonial of diplomacy, — it touches
the heart of nations and appeals to the domestic
sentiment of mankind. Whatever the various
and varying opinions * * * on the policy of
the late President of the United States, all must
agree that in one of the severest trials which ever
tested the moral qualities of man he fulfilled his
duty with simplicity and strength. Nor is it
possible for the people of England at such a
moment to forget that he sprang from the same
fatherland and spoke the same mother tongue."

It is with feelings of pleasure that I quote
these words from the eminent English states-
man, especially in contradistinction of the lan-
guage so freely indulged in, and which I have
so liberally quoted in a preceding portion of my
address.

It was left, however, for Henry Ward Beecher,
in his inimitable manner, two days after the sad
event that took from us our beloved Lincoln, to
speak words that feelingly indicate the true char-

36

ABRAHAM i

acter ot the man that had learned so well to live
From Plymouth Church pulpit the greal G
gational minister among other things said, " B)
day and by night, he trod a way of dange
darkness. On Ins shoulders rested a governmenl
dearer to him than his own life. At its integrity
millions of men were striking at home,
this government foreign eyes lowered. It stood
like a lone island in a sea full of storms, and
every tide and wave seemed eager to devour it.
Upon thousands of hearts great sorrows and
anxieties have rested, but not on one such, and
in such measure, as upon that simple, truthful,
noble soul, our faithful and sainted Lincoln."
# * * " He wrestled ceaselessly through four
black and dreadful purgatorial years, wherein
God was cleansing the sin of his people as by
fire." * * * " Even he who now sleeps has,
by this event, been clothed with new influence
Dead, he speaks to men who now willingly heai
what before they refused to listen to. Now his
simple and weighty words will be gathered like
those of Washington, and your children and
your children's children shall be taught to ponder
the simplicity and dee]) wisdom of utterances,
which, in their time, passed, in part)' heat, as idle
words. Men will receive a new impulse oi
patriotism for his sake and will guard with zeal the
whole country which beloved so well."

"Four years ago, O Illinois, we took
your midst an untried man and from among th

37

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

people. We return him to you a mighty con-
queror. Not thine any more, but the nation's ;
not ours, but the world's. Give him place, O ye
prairies. In the midst of this great continent
his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads
who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew
their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds that move
over the mighty places of the West, chant his
requiem. Ye people, behold a martyr whose
blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for
fidelity, for law, for liberty."

Abraham Lincoln has enriched the English
language. He has left on many pages of our
history words that will live when this generation
and many that succeed it will all be forgotten.
Many of his speeches are classic. To-day they
are placed side by side with the great speeches
of all ages. They are in and of themselves gems
of literature. Homely, in a way unattractive, in
a sense lacking what some people might call
refinement, and yet, not homely, but attractive
and because genuine and true possessing the
truest, highest and sweetest refinement. His
personality stands out big against the horizon
of well remembered history. Edward Everett
delivered a great address when the Nation's
representatives met on the hallowed ground of
Gettysburg to dedicate it as a national cemetery,
ft was a studied, scholarly, refined production.
It will boar reading over and over again. It is
replete with beautiful sentiment, well rounded

3S

ABRAHAM LIN< <>I.\

sentences, magnificent in its diction, in its
erudition, in its every element. He had
days, undoubtedly, putting together the beautiful
expressions contained in it, but the two score
lines of the address delivered by Abraham Liu-
coin on that occasion come down to us to-da)
almost like words of Holy Writ. They are this
day being pronounced all over this continent on
celebrations of this National holiday. It is
related, that, with pencil and the blank side oi a
used envelope, in a car while on his way to the
battlefield, Abraham Lincoln wrote the address.
True, this story is denied. Some of his
biographers, who ought to know, tell us he pre-
pared it carefully in the quiet of his room. Be
that as it may, it matters little; Tins we know,
that the brief address delivered by Abraham
Lincoln at the dedication of the National Ceme-
tery at Gettysburg, on the 19th day of Novem-
ber, 1863, is to-day one of the most beautiful
and touching classics in the English Language.
I am loath to pronounce the closing words of
my address. I love to dwell upon the beauties
of the character of the immortal President. It
seems but yesterday that I looked into his care-
worn but honest face and felt my hand encircled
by his, but Abraham Lincoln has passed from
the visible to the invisible. The incident in life
that comes once, and but once, to all men, has
come to him. He watches where we cannot see
while we move on to perfect the work he could

39

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

not remain to finish. The Civil War is over but
our tasks are not all dene. There are other-
battles to fight for freedom, other victories to
win. He, with a "cloud of witnesses," boys in
blue and boys in gray, an innumerable host, is
watching that we work well the problem still
unsolved. Though invisible, he speaks to us, his
voice ringing down the corridors of Time, as it
wiJI continue to do, to generations yet unborn,
inciting us and them to better deeds and better
lives. His words, — first spoken at Gettysburg
in 1863, — reach and apply to every foot of
American soil. " In a large sense," he said,
"we cannot dedicate, — we cannot consecrate, —
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have con-
secrated it far above our power to add or detract.
The world will little note nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what
they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to
be dedicated here to the unfinished work that
they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great
task remaining before us, that from these honored
dead we take increased devotion to that cause
for which they here gave the last full measure of
devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these
dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,
and that Government of the people, by the
people and for the people, shall not perish fr< >m

the earth." .

40

W60

jw ^Jfa • • • ■ - .<» >> * • » Au

■: j>%.

• ** A* *'

£ „^. 'J

*x> *.

*» *..•• «•*

«v .."'

O'tt'* j? V'.^

V •!*•* <>,

>*..^.^

Ao1

'.: <?% •:

<A *<».

o £»

o* .«*•. "*b

,'. '^o* •

^..^Lr.\

.• ^" ^

^-7

yjws j?'x -.!■«•• . ♦♦^ . -ot

16* ^*.**'"T^»' /v

!* .«JL'«. "*c

<> -o

». ^^ ►:

£> ....... ^t

\

.4'